Kremlin victory at the Hague
By Vladimir Kara-Murza
Behind the façade of a half-hearted objection to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the “independence” of Kosovo, Moscow was quietly celebrating. On July 22, by a vote of ten to four, the world’s highest judicial body overturned decades of legal precedent on sovereignty and territorial integrity by declaring the unilateral secession of the Serbian province of Kosovo to be lawful — a decision that validated the Kremlin’s recognition of two Georgian provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as “independent states.” Following the ICJ ruling, Abkhaz Prime Minister Sergei Shamba declared his region to be on “solid ground” in terms of its claim to secession.
Until now, a new country could be established under one of three conditions: by a vote of the United Nations (as in the case of Israel in 1947–48), by mutual agreement (as in the divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992 or between Serbia and Montenegro in 2006), or in the context of decolonization (as in case of most African states since the 1950s). Unilateral “independence” declarations by Rhodesia and Northern Cyprus, which fell outside of this framework, were ruled illegal by the UN Security Council. The ICJ ruling establishes a new standard: when it comes to secession, anything goes.
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